Accept uncertainty, prepare for surprise

Interesting article from Ian Scoones on UK preparations for swine flu. He refers to Emery Roe and Paul Schulman's recent book High Reliability Management. Scoones is critical that 'early warning approaches' that rely on local knowledge have been largely ignored in our top-down culture. He concludes:

Preparing for a pandemic means preparing for surprises – and being ready to respond rapidly and flexibly under conditions of uncertainty. As the experience with avian influenza has shown, this may require more than simply the top-down, "active and aggressive" technocratic responses being urged.

Roe and Schulman also suggest a need to work more with local knowledge and to value the skill and judgment of middle-level professionals often taken for granted. Skills are needed to work with uncertainty and to prepare for surprise, including systemic thinking. Our government seems to have focused on trying to control....including trying to control how we sneeze. Scoones' article points to rather different priorities and lessons to be learnt here.